Embroidery machines of the personal type which move a hoop carrying embroidary material in X-Y coordinates beneath a stitching head have gained popularity for embroidaring small designs on various types of apparel and accessories such as shirts, jackets, caps, scarves etc.
These machines utilize a two part hoop to clamp a piece of material or portion of a piece of apparel. The hoop is attached to a movable carrier on the machine and moved in coordinate directions beneath the stitching head which includes a needle reciprocating in the Z direction. A typical machine of this type is shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 and a conventional hoop used therewith is shown in FIG. 3. Such machines are availabe from Singer Sewing Machine Company under the name embroidary Unlimited and from Aisin World Corporation Of America under the name P.O.E.M. Also embroidery accessory attachments are availabe for sewing machines made by Viking Husgvarna under the name Huskygram and from Pfaff.
All of these machines and accessory attachments utilize a hoop as shown in FIG. 3 to hold the material to be embroidered.
These hoops are dimensioned slightly larger than the field of stitch of the machine. The field of stich is the dimension of movement of the carriage in the X-Y cordinate diections which is typically 96mm by 96mm.
The machines and accessory attachments are usually driven in the X-Y directions by input from digital positional data commands from a personal computer. However the input may be from other programmed sources such as punch encoded tape read by a tape reader. Various designs such as initials, names, or any text in various font may be programmed on a tape or disc and selected by an operator for embroidery. Similarly, various graphic designs may be programmed in stitching patterns for read out by a personal computer or other device which outputs positional and stitch commands to the machine or acessory attachment device.
The available machines and accessory attachments provide very pleasing personalized text and graphic designs of embroidary on a piece of material. The primary limitation on these devices is the field of stitch of the machine or accessory attachment which limits the size of the text or graphic design which can be embroidered. This in turn has determined the size of the hoop which is used. The hoop generally follows the design and construction of the long known and used hand embroidery hoop comprising two concentric rings which hold the portion of material to be embroidered in tension therebetween.
As shown in FIG. 3, the presently used hoop comprises a defined inner member of generally square configuration, but having radii corners, surrounded by a similarly configured outer clamping member of somewhat deformable material having a split with a screw tightener extending across the split. The hoop also has an intergral extension thereon carrying a magnitizable member which attaches to a complementary positioning and holding magnet on the carriage of the embroidary machine or accessory attachment.
Also shown in FIG. 3, in broken line, is the field of stitch of the machine when the hoop is operatively position on the machine.
It is essentially impossible to remove material from a hoop as shown in FIG. 3 and reposition the material so as align a portion of completed embroidery to continue the embroidery with additional positioning and stitching data.
An object of this invention is to provide a new and improved material holding frame for machines of the type described which permits plural fields of stich without removal of the frame from the embroidery device.
Another object of this invention is to provide such a material holding frame which permits and facilitates repositioning of material with completed embroidery thereon so as to properly align the completed embroidery in a new field of stitch and permit a continuation of an embroidery pattern.
Another object of this invention is to provide a new and improved embroidery material holding frame and method of using same which permits a section of material to be postioned on an embroidery machine of the type described for plural fields of stitch in both X and Y coordinate directions.
A further object of the invention is to provide a hoop of the type described together with a template insert and method of using same which facilitates alignment of partially embroidered material on a frame with a new field of stitch.